Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/378

 What About Potash?

Talk about coal! Why, potash costs $450 a ton and hard to get at that

��THE farmers of the United States and of other countries are dependent on Germany for cheap potash. Ger- many's famous potash beds are unique. These salt beds constitute an important geologic formation, for there are no other similar deposits in all the earth, and potash is indispensable to agriculture and industry.

In 1913, the year before the war, these mines produced close to 12,000,000 tons of crude potash salts, an amount sufficient to build a pyramid nearly twice the size of the famous pyramid of Cheops. At that time, this industry employed 2,200 officers and 40,000 laborers. It used 1,600 boilers, running 2,200 steam engines and developing 220,000 horse-power. The average daily output was 3,670 carloads

��of 10 tons each. A fleet of 258 ships, each carrying 4,000 tons, was required to transport the 1,032,127 tons of potash salts used in the United States in 1913.

The greatest chemical need of this country today is for potash. Besides being indispensable to growing crops, it has a multitude of uses in the arts and industries. It is essential to the manu- facture of munitions, glass, matches, baking-powders, drugs, dye-stuffs, soap, antiseptics, and many other articles. Potash salts are used in the purification of water for municipal and industrial uses, in the metallurgy of gold, electro- plating, processes of refrigeration and the commercial production of hydrogen for the inflation of balloons and Zeppelins. Photographers use it, so do painters, bleachers, weavers, dyers, paper makers, chemists, and many other artisans. With- out caustic potash, Edison's famous storage cell would be impossible.

The known sources of potash in this country are pitifully small in comparison with the needs. The total of the much heralded supply in Searles Lake, California, will not exceed the output of the German mines

���All the comforts of home! Eating lunch far underground in a potash mine some- where in Germany

��Hard at work. Ger- many's potash mines produce annually twelve million tons of crude ore, 40',o pure

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